Generally, a live-line insulator cleaning apparatus adopts a washing method, and some examples thereof are described in Korean Patent No. 283530, Korean Patent No. 433752, U.S. Pat. No. 5,119,851, etc. Such a conventional washing type live-line insulator cleaning apparatus has not only a low cleaning efficiency, but also requires a great amount of water, making it difficult to apply the conventional apparatus particularly to cleaning of insulators of power transmission/distribution lines that are often installed in a mountainous area. For a steel tower often installed in a town, the conventional apparatus scatters a great amount of water during cleaning operation, thus resulting in common application to civil environments.
To solve these problems of the conventional washing type apparatus, a manual live-insulator cleaning apparatus has been developed to clean insulators using a brush even with a small amount of water. However, the most important problem of this apparatus is that, in the case where an insulator string has a very long length as in a 345 kV power transmission/distribution line, it is very difficult to manipulate the apparatus since an insulating rod is significantly increased in length. Therefore, the manual live-insulator cleaning apparatus is restricted in use only to a 154 kV level or less.
To overcome these problems, it has been investigated to put a robot into use to clean live-line insulators in Japan, China, etc., from the middle of the 1980s. For example, cleaning robots for cable heads of power transmission/distribution lines are believed to have been developed in Japan, and, a robot for cleaning live-line insulators with compressed air and water is believed to have been developed by NGK Insulators, Ltd. and used by Chubu Electric Power Co., Inc., Shikoku Electric Power Co., etc. Additionally, insulator cleaning robots for 500 kV power transmission/distribution lines employing water and a brush are believed to have been developed in China, and, water spray type insulator cleaning robots is believed to have been developed in Italy.
However, the aforementioned conventional insulator cleaning robots have a common feature in that these robots use water to clean the insulators. Therefore, it is necessary to use great amounts of water for sufficient cleaning, which is not suitable for some situations where most of the power transmission/distribution lines are located in mountainous areas, and causes difficulty in application and management thereof. Further, these conventional insulator robots require a water tank to supply water thereto and a device to spray water, making it difficult to achieve weight reduction.